The story of a single candle

Some candle shapes have names of their own. A candle with almost no body is a doji: open and close are nearly the same, and neither side won the period. A small body with a long lower wick underneath it is a hammer: the downside was tested, it did not hold, and the period closed near its top. A candle with no wicks that travelled one way from start to finish is a marubozu: one side drove the whole period.

These names are abbreviations: each is the short form of a sentence you could already say in body-and-wick language. Doji means "a draw", hammer means "the downside was tested and rejected", marubozu means "a one-way period". Recognising a shape on a chart means reading that sentence at a glance — and nothing more.

A shape is a sentence, not a story. The same hammer means one thing after a long decline and something else in the middle of a directionless stretch. The same doji is a question mark at the end of a long advance and an ordinary lunch break on a quiet day. The traditional readings — "a doji announces a reversal", "a hammer marks the bottom" — describe not what the shape says but what it may point to when the context fits. A single candle summarises a single period; reading the context is what levels 2 and 3 will teach.